Hello again from beautiful Mazatlán!
22 March 2014 | Mazatlán
Vanessa
This is an update so you don't think we floated away, never to be heard from again. We are safe and sound back up in Mazatlán, and I have some stories to tell about our journey here, and of being up in Banderas Bay, but I just haven't had time, or in some ways, an inclination to write. I think some of it had to do with my sadness and lethargy after losing my Mom, going back up to the States to attend a memorial for her, then dealing with the hassle of bringing her ashes back, which turned out to not be a problem at all in the long run. Mexico really didn't care; all of the problems were on the US side of things. I also then found out a friend/colleague whom I adored, passed away from a stroke, which occurred while overseas teaching in Israel (about the effects of trauma on children). This was about a month after my Mom died. Patricia Van Horn was an international known expert in child trauma and also a professor at UCSF. She was one of the most down-to-earth, warm, funny, cynical, brilliant women I knew at UCSF (she was a PhD and a JD!), and not afraid to go against the grain if she believed in something, no matter how unpopular that might make her with the powers-that-be. She was well-respected in the trauma field, was well-published, and so humble about her successes. So yes, I have been sad to know about her sudden death. At my retirement party, she told me to "go for it. Live your dream while you still can." Well, it certainly confirms what we are doing.
We stayed in Banderas Bay, at La Cruz and in Puerto Vallarta, for 2 months. We liked the town of La Cruz as it was smaller and funkier, with good music and cheaper restaurants than Puerto Vallarta (PV). It also had a seasonal Italian restaurant which had some of the best food we have had since leaving the Bay area, where we sat outside in a large covered patio, with fresh pasta hanging out, drying, near the kitchen. PV is more spread out, thus harder to get around, and more touristy than we prefer. The prices definitely go up when you enter the tourist zone. We never got to Yelapa or Sayulita, which I understand are great little towns to go visit. We hope to hit those next year when we go back down, as well as going further south to Bahia Tenacatita and Bahia de Navidad, near La Manzanilla; maybe as far at Zihuatanejo. But for now we are staying in El Cid again, in Mazatlán, getting some boat work done. We find as many people do, what works better in these latitudes, what needs to be changed, etc., for cooling the boat down, for making the kayaks more accessible, and for charging our systems better. You think you know before you go, but you definitely learn along the way. So we are moving our solar panels where the kayaks are, and the kayaks where the panels were. It will make moving around the boat easier, and we can just drop the kayaks down to take them out. We also need to cut an additional inspection port into the fuel tank so it can be thoroughly cleaned. After we are done with the boat work, we will sail back across the Sea of Cortez to the town of La Paz for the summer. That will be our home base/hurricane safety hole, from which we can go explore the Sea of Cortez. If a hurricane is predicted, we will hopefully be close enough to return to the marina to tie down in the event of bad winds and weather. But we are really looking forward to the clear waters of the Sea, the abundant sea life, and small isolated coves in which to anchor.
Whale Trails and Whale Smells
One night in the anchorage at La Cruz, a big humpback whale came through the anchorage when we were having dinner. We heard the whale breath or spout (a pooof) and looked out to see it 100 yards from us. We were too stunned and it was too dark to get a good photo. But we could smell it. You get to where you can smell their breath! And when you are sailing out in Banderas Bay or along the coast, you get to know "whale trails," a circular bulge on the surface of the water when a whale has just submerged beneath the water.
Popcorn Rays
We also had an evening in the anchorage when we saw small manta (?) rays leaping and hopping about like popping popcorn! It was wild! One would come out of the water about 4-5 feet in the air, belly flop down, well, what else would they have to land on (?) and then another would come up, until there were 10 or 12 of them popping out. Totally wild and fun to watch.
Lisas' and the Cats, or the first and last night they stayed out alone all night.
We decided to give the cats permission to stay out all night, unrestricted by screens, or canvas covers, or closed hatches. We realize this is probably a little picky-uni thing for most people, like..., get on with life (!), "they are cats," but these are the things that occupy your mind when you are retired and just living life - gives you something to look forward to, eh?!?
Anyway, we decided to finally let them be free on deck after we go to bed, and to let go of our fear of, "what if they fall overboard and we don't hear them and don't get to them in time?" After all, they are now officially almost 5 yrs. old, and have lived aboard ummm, ALL their lives, minus 6 weeks. They know how to stay on board mostly. Except for Jackson who is clumsy mostly.
So last night I chose to let them sink or swim so to speak, and opened the screens and the overhead hatches, and after they terrorized us and our guests by practicing their lurking from above and looking down at us while we slept and then leaping down and scratching us on the way, I got smart; closed the hatches and went back to sleep with them up above and me sleeping soundly under the sound of a fan. Apparently the cats had a different experience.
Jackson and Samantha were extremely tired all the next day, in a passed out state despite us motoring away from the anchorage, choppy waves and a vibrating engine. All day. Later, much later, when I went outside in the next anchorage, and sat down with a glass of wine, Jackson climbed a little frantically on to my lap, and each time I tried to dislodge him, he climbed back up. I finally realized it was the "Lisas'" that were freaking him out and probably kept them both up all night! These are actually mullets ("Lisas" in Spanish) that are 6-12 inches long, that swim at the surface in circles and occasionally leap out of the water. Apparently the cats kept watch ALL night because they are both exhausted tonight, and not all that interested in staying out. So much for the late night cats... and I thought they were up all night smoking cigarettes, swapping stories and entertaining other late night creatures. No, they ARE actually fraidy-cats.
Sailing back up to Mazatlán
After spending 8 or 9 weeks in Banderas Bay, (La Cruz and Puerto Vallarta), we weighed anchor and sailed with another buddy boat, Pacific Breeze out of La Cruz. We spent a night celebrating a birthday aboard their boat at anchor in Punta de Mita. We had fresh red snapper Veracruz which was delicious! The next morning both boats left at approximately 8:00am, headed back up to Mantanchen Bay, near San Blas, a place we anchored before. It is a sweet little anchorage surrounded by white sands, palm trees and no-see-ums! They get you at sunrise or sunset, even through our boat screens, they are so little. And we NEVER see them, but boy, do they ever leave a nasty bite or three! Anyway, after leaving the anchorage we rounded the Punta de Mita Point, we were making our way between the point and Las Tres Marietas Islands and we ran smack dab into some of the biggest waves we have seen in a long time. I would say 12-15 feet, with not much time between each one. (Our friends on Pacific Breeze didn't think they were quite that big, but what do they know?) :) Cats threw up as we battled through the waves, which we knew would flatten out as soon as we got around the point a ways and out to deeper water. Well, it took a couple of hours to do that; meanwhile our fuel got quite stirred up and apparently got all the crud at the bottom of the fuel tank equally stirred up. Next thing you know we had our engine start acting up, going slower and slower until it died. There were NO winds to speak of, and luckily we were out of the really big waves by then. We were still in some pretty good swells and choppy water though. Ron had to go down and blow out the engine fuel line while I tried to sail the boat around on just the main sail alone, which we already had up. After a while he got it going again, and then an hour or so later, the same thing happened, and again, we bobbed around for a while, spinning in a circle, sometimes going backwards while he fixed it. This happened FOUR times on the way up. What was to be an 8-hour sail turned into a 14-hour day.
We arrived after dark, exhausted, and luckily there weren't many boats in the anchorage so we anchored without any problems. We existed on 2 pieces of pizza, crackers, potato chips and Mexican wedding cookies during the day. Had an English muffin with melted cheese on it for dinner. Ummm, good nutrition. I didn't have much of an appetite and had stomach cramps all day, an ongoing problem (along with no appetite and diarrhea) that had begun about a week prior after coming down with food poisoning. It turns out I probably had a parasite or amoeba. Great. While in the anchorage our friends on Pacific Breeze gave me a pill which decreased the cramps dramatically. We knew that was my only choice at that point, as medical facilities were at least another 26 hours sail away, or at least that is what we thought at the time. (That sail also turned out to be longer than planned due to an opposing current from the direction from which we were headed, and a very dirty boat bottom- barnacles and grass). So I was now stomach-cramp-free, but continued to have no appetite and diarrhea. We stayed in the anchorage long enough for Ron to clear all of the fuel lines, change fuel filters again, and for the crud to settle down, so essentially another day, leaving that next morning at 7:30 for the overnight sail to Mazatlán.
This sail turned out to be an exciting one in terms of whale activity, with whales doing that thing you see on some insurance commercial, coming completely out of the water! Very cool. We must have seen dozens that day, okay, maybe a dozen total... We had to slow down twice, cut the engine to let whales pass in front of the boat. Ya don't wanna be hitting those thangs. The trip was painful in terms of our speed. We inched along at 3.1-4.2 knots the whole way due to the opposing current and all the growth we had on the bottom of the boat which happened in the bacteria-rich Banderas Bay. That is like going an average of 4 miles an hour - for 130 miles! Slow going, so we obviously had plenty of time to observe the sea life, including picking up a sooty tern for a couple of hours. He/she rode on our bow for a while, then would fly off, pick up a fish or two and return to our bow. It kept the cats preoccupied for that length of time. They couldn't go out of the cockpit, as we don't allow it when sailing or motoring. We don't want one of them to accidentally go overboard underway. We also saw lots of flying manta rays. The trip ended up taking 33 hours versus the 26 we had planned.
We also had to keep a constant eye out for long lines which are fishing lines that we managed to run over a couple of times, unfortunately, but fortunately they didn't snag our propeller. We have heard many nightmare stories about people snagging those things, that can stretch out for probably close to a mile or so. They are fishing lines that the fisherman lay out with nothing but large soda pop bottles as floats every so often on the lines. So they are hard to see, especially at certain times of the day, and can appear almost clear, or disappear behind waves until you happen to spot one again. We even had some locals in a panga come rushing over to us, letting us know where we could make it through without cutting their fishing lines. We don't really want to tangle up with those things, nor do we want to cut the lines, and negatively impact their ability to make a livelihood. Many of the fisherman don't make much money, and losing a set of lines can be devastating to them, I would imagine.
Visitors
While we were in Puerto Vallarta we had our longtime friends, Yaya and Gao Yu, come to visit. We reflected with them on how funny life is, having met them over twenty years ago, when Gao Yu's husband, Shang Ding, who is a famous international painter (now), came over by way of Ron after Ron went to China to conduct art lectures in 1984. Ron met Shang Ding there, and they somehow hit it off even though they had no common language. He came over first through Ron's endorsement of his visa. bringing rolls of paintings like Asian rugs, all sewn together by hand, to make one or two BIG rolls of 40 or 50 paintings! I remember us rolling them out like a huge carpet and being astounded by the fact that someone had sewn all of these canvases together, like a giant quilt of vibrant colors, some even made on the back of cardboard; whatever he could find.
Gao Yu and their daughter, Yaya came over in 1990. Yaya with her long braids, chattering away to me as a young 6-year old, unabashed by the fact that I didn't understand a word she said. Since that time we have lived in close proximity, from Colorado, to Maryland to California. They finally moved into their "final" home in Orange County when Yaya was in junior high school, and after researching where the best schools were in, in California. Yaya attended UC Berkeley and CA College of the Arts, living close by again, and now works as a successful communications/graphic designer/architect at Intel in SF. Gao Yu splits her time between China visiting her husband and her family there, and staying in their home in Orange County. The family is like a part of our family and it was a joy and wonder that we ended up vacationing together in Mexico, 24 years later!
We have also been able to see Ron's cousin, Kenny, who lives part-time in PV. He has been coming down to PV for a while, and bought a condo there a couple of years ago. He spends the rest of the year in Colorado. I had never spent any time around Kenny, but he generously invited us to breakfast one morning and then to take us out one day to run errands, so we spent numerous hours with him, enjoying lunch and sharing stories together and him showing us the sights. We never knew when Kenny might drop by, as he would occasionally on his jet ski, traveling over with a friend, popping his head up from across the dock saying howdy! He was enjoyable to get to know and it will be nice to visit him next time we are back there.
My sister Barbara also came to visit once we were back in Mazatlán. We had a very enjoyable visit, although we weren't able to go out and anchor, as we had hoped to do. We did get to tour Mazatlán, go to a couple of beaches, and take a tourist trimaran to Deer Island, off the coast of the town for some barbecue on the beach and snorkeling. It turned out to be quite a partying boat, which we could have done without, but no one got too out of hand. I'm sure a few people were nursing headaches and bad sunburns the next day though!
The Traveling Two Shadows Performers
One final story is that, as I have probably mentioned before, our cats are trained. Ron began training them when they were little and keeps it up, 10 minutes a day, every day. He found a book about it, and we figured that it would be helpful to have them know at least some basic commands in the event we really needed them to come to us in an onboard emergency. So they come when their name is called (mostly), sit, twirl around in a circle, jump up or down on command, reach up with their paws for treats, and will jump over a stick, or through a boat horseshoe ring. Most of the tricks they do with hand signals. Ron had the patience and discipline to stick with it, and he is really good with them. I would include a video if I could figure out how to put it on the blog. But what began as a training for the cats, now draws an audience on the docks! Word spreads in each marina we visit and people come from all around to see them. Mostly in twos or threes, but it was at 6 the other night! I told him we should start charging! At least a bag of treats or something. It is quite funny and cute, and I even heard someone at one of the cruiser's potlucks ask about the "cat juggler." So that is his new title!
All better now!
And a final note! I finally got rid of the stomach crud, which was possibly amoebic dysentery. Yeah, yuck. I finally went to a doctor in Mazatlán and he figured that it was something along those lines. He gave me some strong medicine, and I seem to be rid of it at this point. Turns out they actually sell most of those meds over the counter, in case we need it again. Anyway, the doctor's appointment was only $22. US. Not a bad deal! And as always, look at the accompanying new photo albums, as soon as I put them in - one will be more photos of Banderas Bay, and the other additional photos of Mazatlán and our trip back up.